We Become Tourists

 After several short trips and stopovers in Paris, we decided to do the city right and spent a couple of weeks there. It was a lazy trip in late Spring. On a previous trip we had discovered a new place to stay, Hotel Floridor. It’s located near Place Denfert Rochereau in the neighborhood where we had stayed previously. By this time, we had already stayed at the Floridor several times and became regular customers there. On one trip to Paris, I called from the airport to secure a room and was told that no rooms were available. I asked, “Même pour un client assidu?” (Even for a regular patron?). I was flattered that they found a room for us. The hotel is right across the street from the catacombs but for some reason we never visited the catacombs.

 

We spent a lot of time just wandering streets in various parts of Paris. We watched street artists in Montmartre as they sketched Sacré Coeur and picturesque street scenes.

 

Blvd Montparnasse is in the neighborhood of the Floridor, just one Métro stop away. The street is home to many bistros and brasseries made famous by the “Lost Generation” of American expats like Fitzgerld and Hemingway. 

La Coupole is one we enjoyed.. The restaurant is divided into two ections separated by a short divider wall. The tables in one half are adorned with linen tablecloths while the tables in the other half are covered with paper and both sides boast art deco straight out of the 1920s The menu and prices are the same in both sides of the restaurant. The food is excellent and people often go there to be seen. I had steack tartare there for the first time.

 

Wandering the streets of Paris is always interesting. The campy shops on Île de la Cité offer some of the most colorful products. 

                Fresh flowers are important to Parisiennes and flower markets are easy to find.

There's hardly a street in Paris that doesn't have at least one sidewalk café where you can rest your legs and sip a refreshing brew and maybe write a few postcards to your jealous friends back home.

Even if you’ve been to Paris many times, Notre Dame cathedral is a must do. Back in the 1970s you could actually visit without throngs of other tourists crowding the scene.

While the roof line of the cathedral has rows of marching saints, gargoyles festoon the eaves and gables. They are there to shed rainwater and to remind believers of the perils of sin. It was also believed that they would serve to discourage visits from Satan and bad spirits.

I had to take Claudia to the Palais de Chaillot to see the magnificent fountains.   

 

A short walk over the Pont St Michel from Île de la Cité brings you to Blvd St Michel and the Latin Quarter, home to riverside book venders, tony shops and restaurants galore where a prix fixe lunch is affordable to the most frugal tourist. It’s a busy part of Paris day and night.